Matthew Phillips scored in the final minute of overtime to lift the Capitals to a 5-4 win over the Bruins in Boston on Tuesday night at TD Garden. Phillips took a feed from John Carlson in neutral ice, then entered Boston territory as the lone white sweater while his trailing teammates went for a change. After cutting back to the middle, Phillips fired a shot past Boston goaltender Linus Ullmark to make winners of Washington in an entertaining exhibition contest.
“It was a one-on-one situation, and I guess I got him turning the wrong way,” recounts Phillips. “It was a shot I was pretty happy with.”
His teammates and coaches were happy as well. The Capitals dominated for stretches of the game, particularly in the back half of the third and in overtime, and they battled back from a couple of deficits along the way, too.
“If you came to a typical preseason game tonight, you got your money’s worth, right from the drop of the puck,” says Caps coach Spencer Carbery. “I thought we did a lot of good things throughout the game, individually and collectively, especially in the third period.
“There were a lot of good moments, and that’s what I talked to our group about. This was our first opportunity, tie game going into the third. Show some of what winning teams do in those moments – whether it’s puck decisions or whether it’s reads – and I thought we did a lot of good things in a tight game that felt like there was more at stake than there really was. That was really good from our group.”
Way back at game’s outset, the Caps quickly drew first blood in the game’s first half minute, only to fall down a goal before the three-minute mark of the first.
After Boston iced the puck on the game’s first shift, Evgeny Kuznetsov won the ensuing draw in the B’s zone, pulling the puck back to Carlson at the left point. Carlson put a drive on net, and Ullmark made the stop. But Washington’s Connor McMichael was right on the doorstep, and he shoveled the rebound to the shelf with a nice backhand shot, giving the Caps the game’s first lead just 26 seconds after puck drop.
Alas, Boston pulled even just 27 seconds later when James van Riemsdyk converted a David Pastrnak feed on an odd-man rush, and the Bruins scored on their second shot of the game as well, getting a Mason Lohrei rush goal from the left dot at 2:42 of the first period to take a 2-1 lead.
“I felt bad for [Caps’ goalie Darcy Kuemper] early in the game,” says Carbery. “As a goalie playing your first preseason game action – and essentially, call it what it is, four months or five months – and you [face] a couple of odd-man rushes and Grade A [scoring chances]. That’s a tough start to hand him, but we were able to settle down after those first two.”
Washington settled down and settled in, and the Caps squared the score a minute into their first power play of the game. Tom Wilson one-timed a shot home from the diamond at 7:51 of the first, burying a perfect Kuznetsov feed from the goal line just to Ullmark’s left.
Late in the first frame, the Caps regained the lead on a strong shift from Sonny Milano. Seconds after a Milano backcheck may have saved a goal at Washington’s end of the ice, the winger took a feed from Dylan Strome and executed a nifty cross-body backhander from just above the paint, tucking his shot into the far corner, over Ullmark’s glove. Milano’s second goal of the preseason restored the Washington lead at 3-2 at 15:57.
The Caps carried that lead to the first intermission, and they killed off a Boston penalty early in the second to preserve the advantage. But shortly before the midpoint of the middle period, the Bruins pulled even on a Milan Lucic goal. Both Washington defensemen got caught on the same side of the ice, so Milano was back in coverage. He tried to swat Lucic’s shot away, but it went off his stick and past Kuemper, tying the game at 3-3 at 8:23.
Washington’s penalty kill snuffed out another Boston power play just after Lucic’s tying tally, and then the Bruins returned the favor, killing off a Washington power play and most of another, sending the game to the third all even.
With 58 seconds worth of carryover power play time, the Caps struck for their second extra-man tally of the night, a Carlson drive from center point that put the Caps up 4-3 at the 43-second mark of the third.
Just over four minutes later, Boston’s Matt Poitras tied the game yet again, scoring from in tight at 4:57.
From the start of the third period to the end of overtime, the Caps owned a 18-5 advantage in shots on net, and they blocked nine Boston shot tries in the third period alone. Ullmark made some big stops in the third, three of them on McMichael, who had a team-high 10 shots on net in the game. McMichael finished the night with no missed shots and none of his shots were blocked, either.
Washington won the opening face-off of overtime and essentially kept the puck for the first half of the extra session. At one point, it appeared as though Wilson might have jimmied one through Ullmark for the win, but replays showed the puck didn’t get over the line. That set the stage for Phillips’ heroics. The former Flames draft choice has shown himself well in playing three of the first four preseason games.
“There’s tons of areas I can still improve,” says Phillips. “This was pretty close to an NHL roster on then other side there, and there’s a lot to learn from still, and some of my details I can get better at. I’ll move on from tonight and focus on the next day.”
